So, how's that working for you?...

Oops. I haven’t posted for nearly a week. I kept meaning to write, as there’s been a lot on my mind, but I haven’t been able to clearly articulate what I want to say.

I’m doing a personal thought experiment that is very revealing. It’s made me more aware of my personal dynamics and where they are leading. I highly recommend this exercise to everybody as a valuable annual personal check-in:

Write a detailed and specific letter to yourself from 5 years in the future as though your life was going just as you dreamed. Then to write another letter from 5 years hence, but as though you had continued doing everything pretty much the way you are now, with ensuing results, and note the differences between the two.

This is a huge wake up call. I’ve began to reassess all the arenas of my life: my career and vocation, physical and mental health, spirituality, love-life and family, extended social relationships, my home and living conditions. The more I allow all this to percolate in my mind and my soul, the more I realize what I need to start changing for my life to become what I want it to be. I am not treating these as resolutions, rather incorporating gradual changes in my lifestyle with a more conscious and intuitive awareness of my habitual patterns, observing what I do now and then choosing whether and how I want to change things.

To be honest, I flaked out a bit in the last couple of years. I am beginning to understand that term: flaked out = fragmented and scattered. I was thrown by some overwhelming events that shook my personal world in the year leading up to my 40th birthday, and I didn’t find the resilience to bounce back. As a result, I lost much of the healthy balance, direction and momentum in my life. Over the last few weeks, I’ve really owned that and recognized how I need to reclaim the responsibility for creating my own life.

One of my "unresolutions" is to reconnect with my friends. I admit I'm not very good at the whole keeping in touch thing once the circumstances that brought us together, like work or school, are over. Ironically, for a dynamic stage animal, I'm actually rather an extroverted introvert - I just overcompensate for innate shyness. So I'm working to change those tendencies and make the effort to reach out more when my time is my own.

I had a long extended lunch date with a dear friend a couple of weeks ago. It’s been tricky to get together recently as she has a 15-month-old and lots of baby things on the schedule as well as her own pursuits, and they moved out of the city several months ago so distance has become a greater factor – I can’t just come over on a whim as before. It was terrific to spend the afternoon and evening with her, to have several hours together and cover all the topics from the banal frivolities to the deep chewy issues. It was wonderful to re-establish the connection - almost like we hadn't been apart.

I have knitting news! I got my knitting mojo back in the last few days. It is a great way to keep my hands and my uber-mind busy while I watch the World Series and contemplate life and all of the above from a deeper intuitive place. And after much tinkering and tinking, I finally figured out the perfect sock recipe for my heel and ankles! I’ve been rather unsatisfied with the fit of several standard sock patterns and I can see that’s been at the root of my second-sock-syndrome. Once I solved the formula for the first one, I whipped off a second one to match that same evening. Yippee! So my revised Socktoberfest plan is to fix the fit on my other singles (so I'll actually wear them) and get them all paired off. Once I get a few of those done, maybe I’ll reward myself and crack open one of those pretty lacy sock patterns I’ve been ogling.